The Hour Before Dawn by Ajaz Ashraf

Author:Ajaz Ashraf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-12-17T12:57:16+00:00

Through the peephole of the entrance door, the bony face of the woman standing outside appeared bewitching. Her skin was the colour of dust, taut and smooth. Her thick black hair, shoulder length, curled around the ears. The nose was sharp, the lips thin, and eyes dark and smoky. Of medium height, an inch or two shorter than him, her body, in a black shalwar-kameez, was innocent of excess or austerity. Rasheed couldn’t guess her age: she could be anywhere between thirty and forty.

Rasheed espied her bring the bunch of roses close to her face. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and held her breath before her breasts came down, exhaling.

The vision was hallucinatory, dream-like. Who was she, and where had she come from? And what was she doing at his door?

He stood at the peephole, enthralled by the vision. She seemed to belong to him in a way he failed to comprehend, like a fragment of memory suddenly floating into his consciousness. He thought he had seen and known her before, but had forgotten her name and couldn’t recall the place and the time of their last meeting. It was confounding for him to feel an affinity for the woman outside. He was filled with a sense of loss. Who could tell what aspects of his being his suffering had effaced.

She stretched her hand and pressed the doorbell, jolting him out of the reverie.

Rasheed pulled away from the door and leaned against the wall. Who was she, and for whom were the roses? It seemed her name was about to be squeezed out of his memory. He peered at the woman, again. A faint smile lingered on her light lips. No, he had been mistaken in believing she belonged to his past, to his memory. She was a stranger who had strayed to his house.

Rasheed opened the door.

She looked at him and smiled tentatively. On the floor was a cane basket. In it were small ceramic pots with plants, green and fresh. Next to it was a hamper; white napkins lay on the top. The air was suffused with the fragrance of roses. And the sunlight was warm.

He stared at her impassively. His kurta-pajamas were crumpled, his hair dishevelled and the stubble on his cheeks more than a week old. His body odour suggested he hadn’t bathed for days.

She thought his body seemed an extension of his voice, sick and in need of rest. His eyes were a surprise, though. They, even in their puffiness, glowed with the intensity she had never seen in any person before. She looked into his eyes and smiled expansively, revealing coffee-brown gums.

‘Rasheed?’ she asked.

He nodded. So he had been right: the woman was indeed known to him.

The woman asked playfully, ‘Do you recognize me?’

Perhaps he knew her from his school or college days, and time had transformed her beyond recognition. He looked at her and said nothing, apprehensive of the past reclaiming him.

The woman took her right hand to the ear, mimicking the action of holding a telephone handset.

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